Twitter’s Chief Accounting Officer Is Rumored to Have Left the Building (Literally)

The Washington Post has written about the abrupt culture change happening at Twitter since Elon Musk entered the picture on October 27 and buried among the complaints of secrecy and fear is a little mention of the CAO GTFOing.

UPDATE: Twitter’s chief accounting officer is rumored to have been “walked out” of the building and his Slack appears deactivated, a day after he was thanked by workers for a Slack post sharing long-awaited details about the stock payouts they’re owed. https://t.co/Mn21Ko9CqM pic.twitter.com/mCXmUHT0m5

— Will Oremus (@WillOremus) November 3, 2022

Robert Kaiden spent 14 years at Deloitte and made it all the way to partner before moving on to greener grass. Brown grass now, maybe?

We can glean more about him and the gig from a Twitter 8-K filed in June 2015:

Effective June 1, 2015, Twitter, Inc. (“Twitter” or the “Company”) appointed Robert Kaiden, 48, as its Chief Accounting Officer. From 1989 to May 2015, Mr. Kaiden served in several roles at Deloitte & Touche LLP, a national auditing firm, including as Audit Partner from 2000 to May 2015. Mr. Kaiden is a certified public accountant and holds a B.A. in Political Science from Hamilton College, an M.S. in Professional Accounting from the University of Hartford and an M.B.A. from The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Following Mr. Kaiden’s appointment, Gordon Lee, Twitter’s Controller and Interim Chief Accounting Officer, will continue to serve as Twitter’s Controller.

The Company entered into a letter agreement with Mr. Kaiden, dated April 24, 2015 (the “Offer Letter”), establishing his compensation as Chief Accounting Officer. Pursuant to terms of the Offer Letter, Mr. Kaiden’s base salary will be $350,000 and Mr. Kaiden will be eligible for an annual discretionary performance bonus of up to 100% of his base salary. Mr. Kaiden will be granted a restricted stock unit award covering 120,000 shares of Twitter common stock that will vest over 4 years as described in the Offer Letter and subject to the terms of the Company’s 2013 Equity Incentive Plan.

Kaiden sold $208k worth of stock at $37.04 per share earlier this year.

Supposedly Twitter employees will be hearing about layoffs today. If we hear any numbers coming out of accounting and finance (no pun) we’ll let you know.